Director, Engineering - Avalara Developer Experience Platform

What You'll Do

We are seeking a Director/Sr. Director to lead Avalara's Agentic Developer Experience (DX) Platform - focused on enabling developers and AI agents to seamlessly discover, understand, and integrate with Avalara's products.

This role owns the external developer experience layer, including exposing documentation for agent-facing interfaces (e.g., MCP), documentation and knowledge systems, interactive tooling, and AI-powered integration accelerators. You will partner closely with domain-focused product engineering who own APIs, MCP tools, backend systems and the partner engineering team, and ensure these capabilities are exposed in a consistent, intuitive, and agent-friendly manner for developer and partners.

#LI-Remote

What Your Responsibilities Will Be

Agent Experience Layer

Build and evolve the external MCP-based interface and tool catalog for building integrations

Standardize how APIs and capabilities are exposed to AI agents

Define best practices for agent-tool interactions (schemas, patterns, guardrails)

Developer Portal & Knowledge Experience

Own the developer documentation platform, IA, and UX

Ensure documentation freshness and accuracy via automation (spec docs sync, drift detection)

Deliver task-oriented, cross-product integration guides

Interactive Sandbox & Exploration

Provide API exploration, testing, and simulation environments

Enable safe experimentation for developers and agents (mock + sandbox)

Sample Apps & AI Integration Kits

Build and maintain reference implementations and starter kits

Deliver agent-ready examples, prompts, and integration patterns

Define and promote "golden paths" for common integrations

Integration Acceleration (AI-first)

Develop AI-powered tools and workflows that reduce time-to-integration

Create reusable "skills" for common use cases (e.g., tax calculation flows)

Enable partners to build faster using AI-assisted approaches

DX Standards & Cross-Team Alignment

Define and drive adoption of API, MCP, and documentation standards

Partner with product teams to ensure consistent external experience

Establish versioning, deprecation, and usability guidelines

Partner Enablement & Ecosystem Growth

Lead developer onboarding and partner integration journeys

Support strategic partners with co-build and acceleration frameworks

Improve integration success rates across the ecosystem

Observability & Continuous Improvement

Define and track DX metrics (time-to-first-success, integration success rate, agent task completion)

Build feedback loops from usage, errors, and developer input

Continuously improve experience based on real-world signals

What You'll Need to be Successful

Education

B.S. in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field AND 12+ years of relevant experience in developer platforms, APIs, or DX leadership roles.

Experience

• Experience leading developer platforms or DX initiatives at scale
• Experience building external platforms or partner ecosystems
• Proven ability to influence across teams
• Experience defining and driving platform standards

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Deep understanding of API design and developer workflows
• Demonstrated experience with AI/LLM or agent-based systems
• Strong data-driven mindset
• Strong product and platform thinking
• Proven ability to influence across teams without direct ownership.
• Curiosity that uncovers opportunities where none seemingly exist.
• Customer obsession that inspires product engineering teams to reduce debt and backlog and improve overall consistency.
• Hands-on leadership mindset
• Roll-up-your-sleeves mindset with willingness to leverage the latest tools, demonstrate how things should be done, and raise the bar for your team and peers.

Avalara is an AI-first Company

AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products. Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.

• You'll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.
• You'll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.
• You'll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

How We'll Take Care of You

Total Rewards

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.

Health & Wellness
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.

Inclusive culture and diversity
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship.

What You Need To Know About Avalara

We're defining the relationship between tax and tech.

We've already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we're not slowing down until we've achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We're bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we've designed, that empowers our people to win. We've been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

We're An Equal Opportunity Employer

Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company - we don't want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.